Many of those who meditate on the war from its climax in 1916 to its end in the Versailles conference may wonder whether they did wisely in execrating and howling down any one who shewed the courage to advocate peace before the sphere of war underwent its last desperate expansion. The government stood by its policy of a "knock-out blow"; the knock-out blow has been dealt. Is any one the better for it? The fire-eaters who proclaimed that anything less than the unconditional surrender of Germany would entail another German war within a generation now proclaim with no more doubt or qualification that Germany is preparing her revenge and has already recovered more quickly than any other of the belligerents.[34] The added two years of war, then, have not brought such security as Rome enjoyed after the destruction of Carthage; the added bitterness of those two years, on the other hand, has made more difficult any good-will and any common effort to substitute a saner and better system of international relationship. Worst of all are the world-wide economic depression and political unrest for which the protraction of the war was responsible. Had negotiations been opened in 1916, the Russian revolution and its consequences might well have been averted; Germany, Austria and Turkey might have been left with stable governments and yet with enough experience of modern warfare to discourage any taste for further adventures; and Italy, France and Great Britain--in that order--might have been saved from insolvency. The war, if ended at that time, would have been ended without American help; and peace would have been concluded without American intervention. This last result might by now be a matter for regret if thereby the world had been cheated of an equitable and permanent peace, such as President Wilson sought to impose on the militarist party of the Versailles conference; but it would perhaps have been better for the terms to be drawn by M. Clemenceau and Mr. Lloyd George on Carthaginian lines than for the world to be tantalised by a glimpse of statesmanship that revealed the universal spirit and then to be fobbed off with a compromise which embraced even the good faith of England.